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Mattie’s Checkup is Coming

Saturday November 2nd

I should be packing bags for a work trip which starts tomorrow (Sunday) morning. Next week, when I’m away, Mattie will be returning to the hospital for a check up. Thoughts of this have trumped my ponderous packing.

We are expecting generally good results from the checkup, with room to improve on Mattie’s physio development.

Spasms Controlled?

On the spasm front things seem to be going well… At least we think they are. We’ve not seen any easily identifiable spasms, we have see the odd reaction to something or eye movement and worried that the spasms had started to stalk Mattie again. However they’ve not been as frequent nor as severe as you would normally expect with infantile spasms. Ultimately (and a little uneasily at first) we decided that these were not spasms. Just last night we thought we saw then return, Mattie was lying on our bed when he started rapidly blinking non stop for about 10 – 20 seconds. He’d stop for a pause then resume. They have since reduced to just occasional flutters of his eyes.

Emma managed to capture a little video of the eye fluttering on her phone, and intends to show that to the Doctor.

The eye flutters have us worried the spasms are returning, so while waiting for the appointment Emma posted the clip to the Infantile Spasms group on Facebook to see if any other parents has seen anything similar. Reassuringly most said it just looked like he was playing, though one or two suggested we get it checked out.

None of the carers at the crèche have reported anything untoward, so we are very hopeful it is nothing. It’s just so hard to tell, which ironically is probably a good thing.

Running to Sit Still

During Mattie’s last check up with the physiotherapist and occupational therapist they noticed that he was a little bit behind. Emma and I are both worried that he is not sitting up straight by himself yet. But then we are comparing him to his older brother, which really isn’t fair as each child, will naturally develop at their own pace. Having said that he’s coming up to eight months old now and is still not sitting unaided. He is oh so close, but just not there yet.

On the plus side Mattie is really very alert, playing and grabbing toys switch them between hands. Grabbing your hand if you place it in front of him. He is full of smiles and giggles. His giggles are the perfect tonic for my sleepy head in the morning – as soon as he sees you walking into his room in the morning you always get a big Mattie style ‘Yaaayy’ followed by giggles. It’s almost as if he was been waiting for you all night.